Time to reload that aging computer

Q. My Dell laptop is 3 years old and appears to be completely messed up, i.e., dreadfully slow (2 minutes to open an e-mail) and probably infected with viruses and spyware. I’ve tried several de-bugging programs but no success. Is there a simple do-it-yourself program which would restore it to the state it was when I received it?

A. There are a few things in life that are certain; death, taxes and the eventual need to completely reload your computer’s system software and applications.

When you buy a new computer from any of the major manufacturers, you are either provided with recovery disks or with the ability to create them. Unless you are proficient at installing your operating system from scratch and have all the software to do so, you should make getting those disks a priority in the early days of owning your new computer. You may not need them now, but you will almost certainly need them down the road.

Each manufacturer has a specific method for restoring a computer back to factory specs, but most of time it is a simple matter of inserting the recovery disk and booting from it and then just following the prompts.

Once complete, all your previous data will be gone (including viruses and spyware) and the computer will be just as it was when you purchased it new. Of course, you will need to make sure you have backed up all of your personal files such as e-mail, photos and documents before you perform the restore. That is, if you want to have them to reload on your refreshed PC.

You will also need to go back and install all the operating system updates and perhaps some driver updates as well as any you installed previously will be gone.

A very common misconception I find amongst computer users is that when a PC starts to slow down or experience a lot of software crashes it means the computer is wearing out. In most cases this is not true. What happens over time is that the software kind of wears out.

But the good thing about software is that it can be reloaded, In most cases, a complete software refresh on an aging computer will make the PC seem like new again.

It’s a time consuming process to be sure. And it can be a little intimidating. But the rewards are worth it as you can often save yourself the cost of a new computer by simply refreshing the one you have now.

3 Responses

As it happens I’m taking the same decision this week, in my case with a three year old HP laptop. Given the current economics of the world I’ll likely be using it another year.

To make matters interesting, and get a wee upgrade, I’m replacing the hard drive. The original unit was a 160 GB 5400 rpm Seagate. The replacement will be a 500 GB Seagate Momentus XT… a hybrid drive that combines 4 GB of flash cache with a 7200 rpm set of platters.

For about $100 this promises to substantially reduce the boot time of the laptop, without the cost or limited capacity of an SSD.

Since Windows 7 was released, I have become a big fan of the Windows Easy Transfer (WET) utility. Previously, I would copy a local NT profile to a backup drive and restore the data by hand. Using the WET, I am spending less time saving and restoring personal data and application settings to the new PC.